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Meeting of the Parliament 31 May 2012

31 May 2012 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Land Registration etc (Scotland) Bill

Harvie, Patrick Green Glasgow Watch on SPTV

I echo the thanks that have been expressed to my fellow members of the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee, to our clerking team, to the officials who supported the process, to our adviser and to all our witnesses.

Murdo Fraser reminded us that he was the only lawyer on the committee and that that gave him a perspective that, perhaps, a few of the rest of us found difficult to keep up with. He seems to have been on the receiving end of some rather cutting remarks about lawyers during recent committee meetings, so perhaps the rest of us should be grateful that we have been protected from those.

Whatever approach the Government took to the bill, there was bound to be a lot of technical content and a lot of expectation on members to deal with that. My regret, which I spoke about during the debate on Rhoda Grant’s amendment 1, is that the minister seems to regard this purely as a technical bill. Its weakness is in the policy content that is not there, rather than in what the Government has chosen to do.

Members may know that I drew most heavily on one witness in particular and I will cite him again. Andy Wightman’s written evidence to the committee pointed out that

“This is the first time in the history of Scotland that a democratically-elected Scottish Parliament has considered the statutory basis for sanctioning who owns land in Scotland and providing the benefits that accrue to landowners with a recorded title. It is therefore vital that Parliament consider some wider questions of public interest that come within the scope of the Bill.”

That is what has not been done and that is the opportunity that has been missed. It comes down to the purpose of the bill. In the policy documents that accompany the bill, its principal purpose is stated clearly:

“Completion of the Land Register”.

However, to listen to the minister’s remarks, both in committee and today in the chamber, it would seem that the bill’s purpose is purely transactional and that it is, in fact, just about facilitating sales, protecting landowners’ interests and promoting economic development.

Questions about the wider public interest and about what the public gain from having an effective and modern land registration system have been missed. A number of those aspects were addressed in stage 1 discussions and in stage 2 amendments, and it became clear that the Government had decided that it was determined not to budge on those issues.

I will address the idea of including a target date for completing the land register. If we believe the assertion that the bill’s principal policy objective is completing the land register, it is odd that the bill does not include a target date—even an indicative target date—as is set for a host of other policies, such as the eradication of fuel poverty. In many areas, we set a target date and give ministers a duty to act in the way that is best calculated to achieve the aim by that date.

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Meeting of the Parliament 31 May 2012

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